Internet marketing for small businesses is increasingly in demand. If you own a small business, then you must know that your business can increase revenue by having an internet marketing plan attached to it. Online advertising, if done correctly, will generate significantly more sales than traditional advertising. Many people do not fully understand the concept of how big their business can become using web marketing strategies. A company or individual can increase their income by 6 or 7 figures a month by using what I am going to show you here. Here are 3 ways to increase your earnings using only the Internet.
Search Engine Marketing
This, in my opinion, is the best way to get tons of targeted traffic to your business website. When using small business internet marketing, advertising on search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing, is key to learning. Just by targeting a keyword or keyword phrase the right way, you’ll drive thousands of people to your business website every day. (See an example)
Example: Let’s say you have a local golf shop located in Atlanta and you want to advertise online. He posts images of his products and markets them on his website. So, let’s say you want to target the keyword “best golf clubs in Atlanta.” If you target this keyword phrase correctly, you’ll get tons of traffic from people who live in the North Georgia and Atlanta area. You will also make sales from people who never entered your store. There are many ways to advertise online, this is just one example of how you can market anything using search engine marketing versus traditional marketing.
There are free methods and paid methods of marketing to search engines.
Free Methods:
This is search engine optimization or SEO. By knowing which keywords to target and how to target them, you can get tons of free automatic traffic from people searching for exactly what you have to offer. Google is the number 1 information site in the world and the top 3 websites in the world. If you can only appear on the first 3 pages of Google, you have a profitable business.
Other ways to free up search traffic: These are free strategies that will bring you more SEM traffic.
merchandising articles
Video Marketing (YouTube) (Others)
Press releases
social bookmarking
Paid Methods:
There are successful paid marketing methods that will bring tons of sales to your business. The first is PPC or “pay per click” ads. You can Google AdWords and create an account. These are the ads that are in the shaded area or to the sides of Google, Yahoo, and Bing. This is the most common method that many marketers perform. You have to be careful with this, because if you do it wrong, you will lose the shirt on your back. However, many online advertising companies or independent marketers get the first page of Google, paying just pennies for a keyword. This is something I can learn in a minute.
Content advertising is another effective way to market your products or services online. This is where you place ads on websites that have to do with your business or products. You can also do this within Google AdWords.
blogging the bank
You may be thinking: “My company already has a blog!” that’s great, but how is it set up and how much traffic is it getting? Are you using traditional marketing to attract a large number of people to your blog, who don’t care, or are you using internet marketing strategies to attract people who care about you and how can you solve your problem? Blogging is powerful, and it can increase your small business revenue more than you can imagine. It is not only about having a blog, but also about the content. This also goes along with free advertising on search engines. You can learn how to optimize your blog and get free traffic. A blog should be the heart of your small business web marketing campaign.
You can also put a subscription form on your blog. Give an incentive to people who subscribe to your newsletter. This is important, because you will have these leads forever. They may not buy from you at the time, but putting them on your subscriber list is a good way to keep them in mind. Also, updating them with coupons will eventually bring in new customers from that email list.
social networking sites
If you are going to use internet marketing for your small business, it is important to have a Facebook fan page. This will psychologically build relationships with people, just like your blog. Here, you can offer free tips and incentives to people just for being a fan. People go on Facebook at least 3 times a day. Updating messages there will keep them in touch with you. This is also a good way to attract potential customers. People may not buy your product right away, but getting them to become fans is like getting them on an email list. You can update posts on your fan page more than on your blog, because people visit Facebook more than blogs.
To get people to visit your fan page, you can do several things. First you can put social widgets on your blog. When people find your blog, let’s say a Google search result, you can have facebook, twitter, youtube and rss icons for people to join you. You can also advertise through paid Facebook advertising and have a link to your fan page. I like the first way better.
These are just 3 of the many ways to market your small business over the internet. There is more of a technical side to making the pieces click into place. It’s the learning curve that’s hard to get over, and most people never really get over it. Internet marketing for small businesses is more in demand. If you fall behind and continue to use traditional marketing strategies, then you are leaving millions on the table.